Wow. Okay, got a phone call from Topsham on Friday at home. Naturally, I wasn’t able to hear that message and then respond until today (Monday). Apparently a crew came to the house on Thursday or Friday and discovered that power and communications run from the pole to my house underground. They won’t perform that kind of installation. Now I need to run a 2″ conduit from the pole to my house that’s at least 24″ underground. The lady on the phone couldn’t recommend anyone who might contract to do that work, but I can do it myself. Yay!!!
I was also informed that the NID (network interface device) on the outside of the house (like a telephone box) gets power from an outlet inside the house. And that NID is coupled with an 8″ long battery backup – like the kind you might use with a computer. So I’ll have an 8″ brick sitting in some random location in my house, immediately inside wherever they decide to place the NID. I asked what it’s for and she explained that if the power goes out, I’ll loose everything!
Me: 
Her: If you loose power you’ll loose service!
Me: If I loose power, my computer will be off and I won’t care.
Her: True, but one comes with the other. That’s the way it is.
Me: 
Well, I’ll dig a hole and get back to you….
Her: Okay.
It would be cool if I could plug my computer into the battery backup as well, but that would mean locating the computer wherever that ends up being, which won’t be ideal. So for all intents and purposes the battery will be a waste of space.
They couldn’t make this easy. It just couldn’t be easy. If the plan is to just cancel them once DSL shows up, I’m not sure it’s worth going through this exercise.
4 responses to “let there be red tape”
Sorry to hear that it’s more hassle. 🙁
We’ll cut through all this nonsense, one way or another. Or dig through it, as it were.
I feel your pain !
I priced some conduit tonight. They asked for 2″ which seems unreasonably large, but all the pieces could probably be had for under $40. 1″ is roughly half the cost and still seems plenty big enough for a single cable. It’s a tough call. The idea of digging a trench and burying conduit for a service I plan to abandon is silly. It’s really the part where I abandon it at some unknown point in the future. Even if it’s a year from now. Although if I’m still waiting for DSL a year from now I might hop in my Delorean and travel back in time to ring my own neck.
I spoke with Fairpoint this afternoon and the woman lead me to a map that shows my area is included in their strategy for work completed in 2010, which is far more informative than any other service rep has been. Yet it still tells me nothing, really. It’s just a stupid map.
There’s a big part of me that was settling into the idea of definitely being connected in a few weeks. A nice cold winter, connected to the internet in my newly weather sealed house. Never get your hopes up.